Visual Analogy

A groundbreaking book exploring the discovery of sameness in otherness.Recuperating a topic once central to philosophy theology rhetoric and aesthetics this groundbreaking book explores the discovery of sameness in otherness. Analogy poses an intriguingly ancient and modern conundrum. How in the face of cultural diversity can a unique someone or something be perceived as like what it is not? This book is for anyone puzzled by why today as Barbara Maria Stafford claims we possess no language for talking about resemblance only an exaggerated awareness of difference. Well-designed images Stafford argues reveal the mind''s intuitive leaps to connect known with unknown experience.The first of four wide-ranging chapters paints a challenging overview of several pressing contemporary issues. Cloning legal controversies about social inequity identity politics electronic copying and the mimicry of virtual reality expose the need for a nuanced theory of similitude. The second examines the historical tug-of-war between analogy and allegory or disanalogy. Stafford provocatively suggests that since the Romantic Era we have been living in polarizingly allegorical times. The third roots this divisiveness within the momentous shift from a magical universe modeled on sexual bonds to an engineered world built of discrete automated units. Finally recent developments in computational brain research notwithstanding major phenomenological questions about memory emotion intelligence and awareness beckon. In the fourth chapter Stafford intervenes in the consciousness debates to propose a humanistic cognitive science with bridging/analogy at its artful core.